8/7/2024

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the International CUA Second Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. My name is Carla, and I will be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And if you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I will now hand you over to your host, James Small, CAO and General Counsel, to begin. James, please go ahead.

speaker
James Small
CAO and General Counsel

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to International Seaway's earnings call for the second quarter of 2024. Before we begin, I would like to start off by advising everyone with us on the call today of the following. During this call and in the accompanying presentation, management may make forward-looking statements regarding the company or the industry in which it operates. Those statements may address, without limitation, the following topics. Outlooks for the crude and product tanker markets and changes in trading patterns, Forecasts of world and regional economic activity and of the demand for and production of oil and petroleum products. The effects of ongoing and threatened conflicts around the globe. The company's strategy and business prospects. Expectations regarding revenues and expenses, including vessel, charter hire, and G&A expenses. Estimated future bookings, TCE rates, and capital expenditures. Projected scheduled dry dock and off-hire days. purchases and sales of vessels and construction of new-build vessels, the company's consideration of strategic alternatives, anticipated and recent financing transactions and plans to issue dividends, the company's relationships with its stakeholders, the company's ability to achieve its financing and other objectives, and other economic, political, and regulatory developments globally. Any such forward-looking statements take into account assumptions made by management based on various factors, including management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected and future developments, and other factors that management believes are appropriate to consider in the circumstances. Overlooking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, many of which are beyond the company's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the statement. Factors, risks, and uncertainties that could cause International Seaway's actual results to differ from expectations include those described in our annual report on Form 10-K for 2023, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2024, and in other filings that we have made or in the future may make with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, let me turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Lois LeBrock. Lois?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, James. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining International Seaway's earnings call for the second quarter of 2024. On slide four of the presentation, which you can find in our investor relations section of our website, results for the second quarter represent our eighth consecutive quarter of adjusted net income over $100 million. Net income was $145 million, or $2.91 per share, excluding the gains on vessel sales and other one-off items, adjusted net income for the second quarter was $118 million, or $2.37 per diluted share, and adjusted EBITDA was $167 million. On the lower left section of the slide, we were busy with fleet renewal in the second quarter. taking delivery of six EcoMRs while selling three aged 15 years or more. This lowered our average MR age by one year. One of the three vessel sales closed in mid-July. We funded the acquisition of the EcoMRs with the proceeds from vessel sales, along with a $50 million revolver draw and the issuance of 624 000 shares in cash on hand on the upper right hand side of the slide we continue to benefit from our balance sheet at the end of the second quarter we had 682 million dollars in total liquidity which included 506 million of undrawn revolvers we increased our revolver capacity by nearly consolidated our term loans and converted them into a revolving credit facility. We now save about $80 million per year in mandatory repayments, which also raises our free cash flow generation and lowers our spot break-even rate to under $13,400 per day. As a result of these accomplishments, we continue to share our upside with our shareholders. Today, we declared a combined dividend of $1.50 per share, representing 64% of adjusted net income, and as shown in the lower right hand chart, another quarter of a double digit yield for our shareholders. Over the last 12 months, Seaway's dividend yield has been 12% of our average market cap. We continue to prioritize our balanced capital allocation, positioning the company for the future with opportunistic fleet renewal and enhancing our balance sheet while sharing in our upcycle with a double-digit dividend yield to our shareholders. Slide five, we've updated our bullets on tanker demand drivers with subtle green up arrows next to the bullets represented as positive for tankers, the black dash representing a neutral impact, and a red down arrow meaning the topic is not good for tanker demand. Pulling highlights. We expect oil demand to continue to grow at a rate above its 30-year average growth. A good portion of this growth is regionally in Asia, which has grown slower than expected at the beginning of the year. While oil supply growth is largely in areas not capped by OPEC Plus, tanker demand, particularly the Vs, are better off when the cartel's production also grows. It's a heavy election year worldwide, and results could indirectly impact our tanker demand. While seaways had benefited by geopolitical events that have caused disruptions to both crude and product tanker trades, it is important to recognize that these events have not defined tanker earnings, but merely bolstered a fundamentally strong market. The graphs at the bottom of the slide show that the growth in oil demand and seaboard transportation of crude oil and refined products looks to remain healthy over the next few years. On slide six, Strong tanker markets naturally would dictate more ordering, and the order book has grown to about 11% of the total fleet. However, shifts on order, as we show at the bottom left-hand of the page, are not enough to replace a fleet that is aging significantly. The average age of the tanker fleet today is over 13 years old and is likely to get older with so few new building deliveries. Generally, older ships have less efficiency and less utilization. With a greater percentage of the fleet in this vintage, the industry needs more ships to cover the increasing seaborne demand. Different from other cycles, the longer lead times in our order book could limit the new orders today, especially when factoring in pending environmental regulations. Overall, this sets the stage for a continued strong up cycle over the next few years, and Seaways will capitalize on these market conditions. You can count on us to utilize our balanced capital allocation approach to renew our fleet and adapt to industry conditions with a strong balance sheet while returning to shareholders. I'll now turn it over to our CFO, Jeff Pribor, to provide the financial review. Jeff?

speaker
Jeff Pribor
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Lois, and good morning, everyone. On slide 8, net income for the second quarter was $145 million, or $2.91 per diluted share. This includes gains on vessel sales and a provision for the settlement of our UK multi-employer pension funds. Excluding these impacts, our net income was $118 million. On the upper right chart, adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2024 was $167 million. We've provided a reconciliation from reported earnings to adjusted earnings in the appendix. Our expense guidance for the second quarter fell largely within the range of expectations, but I'd like to highlight certain aspects within our ecosystem. At the time of our last earnings conference call, we guided toward 359 days of off-hire planned dry dockings and repairs. As outlined in the appendix, our actual off-hire time was $559. About half of the 200-day difference relates to dockings that we moved forward into the second quarter ahead of most of these vessels delivering into time charters early in the third quarter. Another 60 days of additional off-fire time relates to repair work, which was generally one-off in nature, to maintain safe and reliable operations. The remaining 40 days relate to some additional positioning and adapting of our vessels to support U.S. West Coast training for our customers. Our lightning business continues to prosper with nearly $14 million in revenue in the quarter. Combined with about $3 million in vessel expenses, $4 million in charter hire, and $1 million in G&A, the lightning business contributed about $6 million in EBITDA in the second quarter and brought its year-to-date EBITDA contribution to just about $13 million. Turning to our cash bridge on slide nine, We began the quarter with total liquidity of $626 million, proposed of $250 million in cash and $411 million in undrawn revolving capacity. Following along the chart from left to right on the cash bridge, we first add $167 million in adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter, less $24 million in debt service, less our dry docking capital expenditures of $16 million, and then add working capital benefits largely due to the collection of receivables of approximately $28 million. We therefore achieved our definition of free cash flow of $154 million for the second quarter. This represents an annualized cash flow yield of about 20% on today's share price. The remaining bars on the cash bridge reflect our capital allocation for the quarter. We spent $175 million to acquire six eco-MRs net of $35 million in share value issued to the sellers in the form of 624,000 shares. We also sold two vessels during the quarter for $48 million and borrowed $50 million on our new $500 million revolving credit facility in funding for the MR. In connection with the closing of the revolving credit facility, we increased our capacity by $150 million, which was subsequently reduced to under $100 million after drawing for the MR purchasing and also we extinguished our ING term loan for $20 million. Lastly, we paid $1.75 per share, or $87 million in dividends during the quarter. These components led to ending liquidity of $682 million, comprised of $176 million in cash and short-term investments, and $506 million in non-comp development capacity. Moving now to slide 10. we have a strong financial position detailed by the balance sheet on the left-hand side of the page. Cash and liquidity remain strong at $682 million. Vessels on the books at cost are approximately $2 billion versus current market values of over $3.7 billion. And with $720 million in gross debt at June 30th, this equates to a net loan-to-value of quite around 14%. Our debt at June 30th was 78% hedged to our fixed rate leading to an all-in weighted average interest rate of about 625 basis points, or less than 100 basis points above today's SOFR. In the table on the bottom right-hand side of the slide, our debt balances as of June 30th reflect the amend and extend of the $750 million facility, which we now call the $500 million RCF. As well as mentioned before, this facility has no mandatory debt relief, generating a savings of about $80 million per year. It also increases our free cash flow generation by the same $80 million per year since mandatory repayments are included as part of debt service calculating free cash flow. We continue to enhance our balance sheet to create the financial flexibility necessary to both facilitate growth and provide returns to shareholders. We have $506 million in undrawn revolvers. Our nearest maturity in the portfolio isn't until the next decade. We continue to lower our breakeven costs we share in the upside with double-digit returns to shareholders. On the last slide that I'll cover, slide 11 reflects our forward-looking guidance and book-to-date GCE aligned with our spot cash breakeven rate. Starting with GCE pictures for the third quarter of 2024, we can see some seasonality returning to the tank markets. While I will remind you that actual GCE we report at our next earnings call may be different, as of today, we have a blended average spot TCE of about $37,300 per day, fleet-wide so far for this quarter. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see our forward spot breakeven rate, now under $13,400 per day, composed of a fleet-wide breakeven of about $16,000 per day, less the effect of nearly $2,800 per day in time-travel revenues. As a result, based on our spot TCE book-to-date and our spot breakeven, It looks like seaways can generate significant free cash flows during the third quarter. On the bottom left-hand side of the chart, we provide some updated guidance for our expenses in the third quarter, as well as our estimates for 2024. We also included in the appendix a quarterly expected off-hire for the rest of the year, which is significantly lower than previously guided due to changes in our dry dock schedule and the CAPEX schedule for 2024. I don't plan to read each item line by line, but encourage you to use these for modeling purposes. That concludes my remarks, and I'd now like to turn the call back to Welles for closing comments.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, Jeff. On slide 12, we have provided you with CWAID's investment highlights. Summarizing briefly, over the last seven years, International CWAID has built a track record of returning to shareholders, maintaining a healthy balance sheet, and growing the company. Our total shareholder return is nearly 500% since our inception, representing a 23% compounded annual return. Over the last 12 months, our combined dividends of $5.82 per share represents a 12% yield on our average share price over that time. We continue to make strides to keep our fleet age below the global tanker average. in what we see as a sweet spot for tanker investments and returns. We've invested in a range of tanker classes, casting a wider net for growth opportunities and supplementing our scale in each class by operating in leading pools. We keep our balance sheet fortified for any down cycle. We have over $500 million in undrawn credit capacity to support our growth. Our net debt is 14% of the fleet's current value, and we have 34 tankers that are unencumbered. Lastly, our spot tankers need only earn $13,400 per day to break even in the next 12 months. At this point in the cycle, we expect to continue generating cash that we will put to work to create value for the company and for our shareholders. Thank you. And with that said, operator, we'd like to open the lines up for questions.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you've changed your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please make sure your device is unmuted locally. We will now make a quick pause here for the questions to be registered. Our first question comes from Ben Nolan from Stifel. Your line is now open.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

I appreciate it. Thank you, guys. So I wanted to go back to the dry docking days, if I could. Jeff, you mentioned that you pulled some of those forward for ahead-of-time charters, but still in aggregate, the number went down by more than 100 days for the year. Just curious, is some of that being pushed into next year, or is it just less than you thought last quarter?

speaker
Jeff Pribor
Chief Financial Officer

Well, yeah, so for this quarter, I think the point is off-hire was 200 days more than we had provided in the last quarterly conference call report. So of that, yeah, if you look at the full year, we are up now with our guidance for the full year. So some of it affects the year, but some of it is just timing between quarters. And that's the main point we want to make, That's not something you could have seen before we put out the information today. So I wanted in my remarks to make clear that part of the off-hire is just timing it and a little bit of positioning of vessels or preparing vessels.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

It was just sort of opportunistic. Sorry. It was just opportunistic. Yeah, absolutely.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Okay. All right. You know, Dan, one of the things.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

Oh, go ahead.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

I was just going to supplement what James was saying. One of the things we're, you know, focusing on those Afromaxis is getting them into a position for that West Coast trade. And those in particular were a couple of vessels that, you know, we were preparing with the extra dry docking.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

Gotcha. Sorry, Lois, you said the Afromaxis there?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. You know, we are positioned now with – that pool that we've put together with Ultra Chile and have those vessels out there. And we will try to take advantage of that TMX trade as that develops.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

Gotcha. That actually leads to my second question. It seems like the Afromaxes in particular have been below sort of market levels, and I appreciate that they're a little bit older maybe than average, but was part of that and is part of that even in the third quarter simply a function of the shifting around of the fleet and maybe some of that dry docking? And going forward, we should expect those to be a little bit more similar to the market rates, would you think?

speaker
Derek Salone
Executive (title not specified)

Hey, Ben. It's Derek Salone. I'll take that one if I can. You kind of answered the question for us. That's exactly right. So we've taken advantage of our JV partners where we, even before this Afromax pool, we've had two pools with Ultra Chile that specialize on the west coast of the Americas with Panamax International and CPTA. So as TMX was coming was coming to fruition, we made the call to start Acromax International so we could take advantage of, one, hopefully the TMX trade, but two, just the relationships that have been built over years with those joint venture pools. What that meant, though, for the first half of the year is advancing dry docks, doing a little bit more work to be ready for the West Coast trade, and the real pain point was dry docks in the East that we had to then get the ships to the West Coast of the Americas. So that was... a lot of positioning training to get this new pool off the ground.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

Got it. Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate that. And then lastly, for me, if I could, just bigger picture, you know, we talk about the aging fleet and there's the dark fleet and all of this kind of thing, although it seems like there's been a little bit more cracking down on that. Do you think there's much of a chance that we begin to see some of these older assets actually leaving, leaving trade, uh, and being scrapped even in a high market or is it, is it probably just market related other than maybe ones and twos? Just curious if, if you think that we're beginning to get to maybe a tipping point with respect to the age of the assets and the broader fleet.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

You know, Ben, uh, it's, Definitely something that we watch constantly. And when we look at, you know, the supply side and, you know, take the Vs where you have, you know, either none or one delivery in single digits next year. So, you know, you're looking at very little new buildings coming in the market. I kind of expect, believe it or not, for, you know, in two years, today the total tanker fleet in the world is over 13 years. I think in two years it's going to be over 15 years. And then, you know, we're only in the mid-innings, we believe, in this very structurally strong cycle. And, you know, unless those owners can't trade at all, I don't expect them to leave the fleet. But then, you know, eventually that will come home to Ruth.

speaker
Jeff Pribor
Chief Financial Officer

Okay. And another point is, you know, that the older vessels, have a lower utilization in and of itself because of their age. So while it's not scrapping, older vessels have less utilization. So the fleet shrinks naturally.

speaker
Ben Nolan
Analyst, Stifel

Sure. That's a good point. All right. I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

Thank you, Ben. Thanks, Ben. Our next question comes from Chris Robinson from Deutsche Bank.

speaker
Chris Robinson
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Hey, good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my questions. Good morning. Jeff, yeah, morning, Lois. Jeff, maybe this is a question for you, but just looking at the summer pullback here in rates and then as that relates to the share price, could you look towards the $50 million repurchase program here to take advantage of the, it seems like an attractive discount to NAP? How are you thinking about I guess, the trade-off between the quarterly dividend and potential repurchases here.

speaker
Jeff Pribor
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Hi, Chris. So, look, we think it's important to have a share repurchase program in place, and we not long ago refreshed the amount from our last repurchase, so we do have a solid $50 million in place. And as always, we will look at that opportunistically. But, you know, we stuck with the dividend. What we are striving for with that is a measure of transparency, consistency, and a really solid yield or return to shareholders. And I think we've shown that the transparency is based on always being at least 60% of net income, which is an easy statistic for people to wrap their minds around or look up in whatever source they want. And consistency for straight quarters of it. that's a measure of consistency and solid yield always mentioned in her remarks it's still double digits 12 percent last 12 months so we think that's good capital allocation but with our to answer your question again with the share purchase program in place and our low leverage and a lot of liquidity yeah we will monitor the share price and that's certainly an option available to us going forward

speaker
Chris Robinson
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

All right, thank you for that. My next question is just around the cash break even here, which is at very low levels relative to history. Looking at your expectations for OpEx and the inflation going forward, do you think you can maintain the cash break even where it is today? And what would be the main drivers, do you think, of upward pressure on that number from where we are today?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, You know, I would say basically, you know, when you talk about, you know, where we see I think some of the inflation creep in is in transportation expenses and shipping crew, you know, some availability at times of dry docks, you know, because the world is really busy. But, you know, we think that we can hold the line on that and, you know, in the appendix we give you some expenses and, you know, for the remainder of the year, and we look to be able to hold that line.

speaker
Chris Robinson
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Got it. Sounds good, Lois. Thank you for that. I'll turn it over.

speaker
Derek Salone
Executive (title not specified)

Thanks, Chris.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

Our next question comes from Omar Nocta from Jefferies.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you. Hey, guys. Good morning. a couple questions uh from my side just wanted to ask we talking about the tanker Market and um you know rates are clearly softer at the moment seasonally it looks like um both crude and product are lower than where they were in the first half and just wanted to get your sense you know as we move through the final here four or five months of the year how do you see both crude end product bearing I guess one perhaps an easy question is you know do you see a rise in race in the coming months in both segments and in two do you think there's one that's going to lead the other

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

You put a lot in there, Omar. How are you? So, you know, as we, you know, look at the year on crude and product, and definitely we've seen seasonality creep into our markets here in the third quarter. Nonetheless, you know, while it doesn't look like there will likely be more than 2 million barrels a day of oil demand growth for the year, there certainly will be more than a million barrels per day and maybe around a million and a half in oil demand growth events. the fundamentals of kind of, you know, where we start. The markets have been pretty consistent, you know, this year. And when we look at it, I mean, I would say crude may have a little more, you know, products. I mean, look at the Q3 numbers. You know, you're looking at 35 a day for what has been booked on MRs, right, that we've put in our charts. So that's really quite strong. And then I'll have Derek jump in there. There still is an expectation in the second half for demand increases.

speaker
Derek Salone
Executive (title not specified)

Thanks, Omar. Thanks, Lois. I think you said it great, right? We've seen a return to seasonality that we haven't really seen since the sort of COVID recovery in the tanker markets and the Russian-Ukrainian invasion. So some seasonality is not necessarily a bad thing for the markets, right? We see a softer summer. in June and July. But, you know, Omar, we've already seen increased OPEC plus crude exports for August, you know, almost 2 million barrels a day more than, say, compared to July. So that sort of push of crude supply should help the crude markets a great deal into the fourth quarter. Couple that with, you know, some of the earlier comments on the order book, right? There's a V to deliver this year. There's five Vs to deliver next year. So, do see some upside in the winter months for the crude sector, for sure.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful, Collar Seth. So, a couple million barrels more here in August versus July should start to tighten the market. And I guess, presumably, then that means crude tankers will lead the charge, potentially, as we move forward?

speaker
Derek Salone
Executive (title not specified)

If we look at the V's, they've got sort of the most room to come up, right? I mean, the MRs, 38Q1, 35Q2, mid-30s for Q3, books so far. That's historically very, very strong for the MRs. We don't see anything softening that per se, but I think the crew will have to lead sort of the increase because they've got the most room to go up.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

Yeah, yeah, good point. Obviously mid 30s on the Mars in the seasonal soft period is is obviously not too shabby. The. Yeah, the just the lowest you just mentioned in the appendix. I just wanted to ask, you know the guidance on state OPEX. I'm not sure if I'm looking at it the right way or calculating it correctly, but it feels like perhaps maybe the running costs on the on the ships are going to be maybe $500 a day lower. if not maybe 1,000. Does that sound right, at least in relation to, say, the first half? Do you think this is a new baseline? Or should we just kind of think about the average for the full year as more indicative?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

You know what I would say, Omar, is that I think that, you know, in the second half, we're very stable overall. I'd like to have Tom come back, you know, and kind of maybe look at, you know, the first half, the second half. But basically, we look at pretty stable OpEx, you know, overall. And it isn't as if you're going to have, you know, nobody's taking a decrease, right? But we are looking at stable OpEx. So, we'll come back just to bridge that with, you know, to get into those numbers a little bit, if that's okay with you.

speaker
Omar Nocta
Analyst, Jefferies

That's totally fair. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll pass it over.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

Thank you, Ulrich. And our next question comes from Sherif El-Negrabi from BTIG.

speaker
Sherif El-Negrabi
Analyst, BTIG

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. In your prepared remarks, you highlighted your liquidity position, which is approaching about $700 million by the end of August. That's a lot of dry powder and looking beyond the next two years when yards look backed up. I'm wondering if you see long-term growth opportunities on the crude side, the product side, or if you would consider something entirely different. You know, I think you've already covered share repurchases, but something different given where asset prices for both are.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Sharice. So I'll flip it to Jeff in a moment. You know, what we would say is that, You know, we took delivery of three new Vs in 2023, dual fuel LNG on those. We're building 60s LR1s and, you know, we've been selling MRs that are older and bringing in the more modern ones. So we don't feel like there's a have to here. What we really like is having that balance sheet in beautiful shape where you do have that undrawn revolving credit facility there where if you do see an opportunity, we can take advantage of that. And we are in both crude and product. We are not planning to take a sharp right turn into another particular space at the moment. And then, Jeff, did you want to talk at all about our liquidity?

speaker
Jeff Pribor
Chief Financial Officer

Well, just to say that liquidity is, optionality so you know we're happy with the low levels of debt we've got uh at 14 i love the value you want some debt uh a lot of that we have left is so-called high quality debt that we would want to pay off plus you know it provides a greater return on the equity uh so uh what we've been able to do is establish a lot of liquidity through the underground revolver as you noticed but also They have 34 uncovered vessels, so that's another form of liquidity that provides optionality for whatever comes. But we're prepared for options when we see attractive transactions available to us.

speaker
Sherif El-Negrabi
Analyst, BTIG

Got it. And then drilling a little deeper on Omar's question about the market, last week Nigeria allowed the Dangote Refinery to buy crude directly from NNPC. so it can ramp faster. And I'm curious how you see that affecting crude versus product flows and any color on how that refiner has already impacted the Atlantic trade would be helpful.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

So, D'Angote is putting out some diesel. It's supposed to have a total of 600,000 barrels a day of capacity, which I do believe one day they will utilize. But I think we're looking more at around 100,000 barrels a day of capacity. you know, where you're seeing some exports coming out and a lot of that's been diesel. And you have seen an effect on the worldwide diesel margins, right, that had gone down and have now bounced back a little bit. So we've also seen in the market some of the imported Dangote crude, which they will continue to do. I think it'll be around 25% or ish that they plan to take from Nigeria. I think that it's early days in Dangote, and that's an evolving situation. Derek, any more flavor on that?

speaker
Derek Salone
Executive (title not specified)

Not particularly. I mean, we had seen a good deal of imported crude into Dangote as the facility was getting up and running. You know, how long we expect that to continue was always debatable, being Nigerians as a bullpen-producing, exporting nation. So we were happy to see it when we have it. Don't expect that to drop off to zero anytime soon. And I think, Sharif, you've got the right question in terms of what that will do to clean product trades in the Atlantic Basin. And I think we still need a little bit of time to tell.

speaker
Sherif El-Negrabi
Analyst, BTIG

Hey, that's great color. Thanks, everyone.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And our next question comes from Liam Burke from B Reilly.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, B. Riley

Good morning, Lois. Good morning, Jeff. Good morning. Lois, you added three more MRs into the time charter market. Are you seeing increased step up in demand from the shippers to secure tonnage on a longer term basis?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

You know, Liam, we've got a total of 15 vessels on time charter, and, you know, we try to look for something that's going to lock in more than, you know, you're in very strong spot markets, right? So we look for a multi-year period, and when there it can lock it in above long-term averages, you know, then we go ahead and do that. We have about 20% of the fleet on time charter right now, so... You know, we've got some strong customer relationships, and when they're looking to add in, then, you know, we'll do that. You know, right now we're in a little bit of a steady state, I think, and if we see something, we'll go ahead and lock it in. Otherwise, you know, you're in the summer, and, you know, it's even August here. So, you know, I'm thinking, you know, everybody comes back in Q, you know, later in Q3 and gets to work on locking in their book.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, B. Riley

Fair enough. Thank you. And on the MRs, you've got, you still have a few older ones in the fleet. How are you balancing historically elevated rates with potentially divesting some of these older MRs and lowering the age of the fleet?

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Amy Nunez- yeah so you know, if you look at it we've been steadily we call it pruning you know selling you know. Amy Nunez- Four or five a year, you know now you saw us bring in some more modern assets and then every one of these vessels that's in the spot market over the last year has brought in $7 million over. Amy Nunez- breaking the level. So it's pretty, you know, it's pretty stunning, you know, all around on the MRs. So, you know, the earnings potential is very strong. You know, we divest some of the older. We bring in more modern. You know, we feel pretty steady on it.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, B. Riley

Great. Thanks, Lois.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Liam.

speaker
Liam Burke
Analyst, B. Riley

Thanks, Liam.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

And that was our final question, so I'll hand back over to the CEO, Louisa Berkey, for any final remarks.

speaker
Lois LeBrock
President and Chief Executive Officer

We just want to thank everyone for joining us for really eighth quarter of really strong returns to shareholders. And we're looking forward to getting back together next quarter. So thank you very much. Enjoy the summer.

speaker
Carla
Conference Coordinator

That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for joining.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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